1. Both of us write entries on here! So, sometime "I" means Heath and sometimes "I" means Linlea but I'm sure you'll be able to figure that out! (All the previous entries I=Heath, today I=Linlea :)
2. We have another blog all about our temple adventures! It's http://westtemplejourney.blogspot.com/ we have visited 7 LDS temples already and are on the quest for more! We have an advantage right now because we live in Utah surrounded by so many beautiful temples! :)
3. Well, nothing else really.... just that we're crazy and love posting fun things (when we get around to actually doing it!) Enjoy!
Okay, we'll start from the beginning and work our way forward to today!
"Let's start at the very beginning.... a very good place to start!" (Guess that song/movie?) The beginning = our wedding! :) It was amazing! The night before we had a dinner with a lot of friends and family put on by Heath's family. That was so fun to have everyone together where we could talk to everyone and get excited for the next day! After the dinner we had bachelor/bachelorette parties. (Which consisted of me and some of my girls going out for ice cream - I got a "Heath" blizzard - and Heath at my house with some of his guys watching youtube videos. It was so great!)
Then, our actual wedding day was absolutely perfect and everything I ever dreamed of! The temple was beautiful with incredible blessings promised to us for ETERNITY!! The weather that day was a perfect NM winter day... no rain, no snow, not so cold... it was such a blessing! Outside the temple was so fun with all our wonderful friends and family there with us! (That put up with my directing a million picture combinations :) My handsome husband, my dress, my jewelry (thanks to Sharon), my hair and veil (thanks to Elissa and Yolie), the wedding party attire, the cake (thanks to Denette), the food (thanks to Cindy, her family, and my grandparents and other family), the pictures (thanks to Chad, Denise, and Rochelle), the decorations (BIG thanks to my mom and to Sharon, Annie, Rosie, Grandma, Shelby, and Suzi that all helped with it too), our video (thanks to Kyle), our honeymoon suite that night all decorated up (thanks to Brent, Koli, Andy, and Tracey), and everything (So much thanks to my whole family, especially my parents, and Suzi (Heath's mom) and family)... it was all so perfect! The reception that night was so fun as well! So many people helped us set up for it and clean up after and we're so thankful for them! The ring ceremony, with Chuck Brown officiating it, was excellent as well! When I walked into the gym next to my amazing new husband, it literally took my breath away! It looked absolutely beautiful and we were so blessed to have it filled up with so many people that have helped and supported us! I can't really even put into words how I felt that day... happy! I married my Prince Charming and my fairy tale wedding happened!! It was amazing. :)
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| The Groom |
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| The Bride |
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| Our Bridesmaids and Groomsmen |
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| Everyone at the temple |
There are tons more pictures... I put lots up on facebook, so if your signed into facebook you can go here to see them if you want. :)
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| This is our Christmas decorations in our hotel for our 1st Christmas. :) |
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| My family picture on Christmas. :) I still need to get pictures from other family members of the holiday. :) |
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| Our first day there |
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| The view from our room |
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| These guys just came out and started dancing around on the beach one day. It was pretty fun to watch! |
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| Decorated Tree! |
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| Gingerbread house! |
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| Magic feet... |
(Above) After dinner one night we went out on the beach.... then we had lots of fun with the timer on our camera (it took me like 5 times to get the handstand right) and playing in the sand!
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| After climbing up Dunns River Falls... we went right up the middle of a waterfall! Pretty fun! |
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| From the flip flops we got for Christmas! |
This restaurant was out over the water. It was fun to sit out there... very romantic. To the left was Heath's dinner... uh, we're not really sure what it was but it scared us a little! It ended up tasting alright :)
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| The wind finally died down enough to go out kayaking and sailing! We kayaked out by ourselves for a while, way fun and a definite arm muscle builder, and then one of the workers took us out sailing!! That was way fun and so neat too.... A little nerve-wracking when the other sail boat crashed and flipped by the island out there, but they were all okay! :) |
One day we spent horseback riding through the jungle! It was an old plantation... very pretty!! Heath was very upset that he had to wear a helmet to ride the horses (he did use to ride bulls, ya know?!! :)
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| Kickin' an ostrich. :) |
This night we had dinner at one of the fancier restaurants. After our first course the waitress brought us out a sorbet looking thing. It looked good but we didn't know why she brought it to us. So, Heath got her attention and kindly told her that we didn't order that. She looked us with a little grin on her face and said... No, sir, that is to cleanse your palate before your main dish. ha! We had a good time with that one. Who knew you had to cleanse your palate? We are obviously not high class restaurant goers... but it was good and we got a good laugh! (Well and so did the waitress... :) After dinner we were heading back to our rooms when another lady that was staying at the resort told us that she could tell we were newlyweds and asked us (very politely and explaining that her husband was embarrassed that she was going to ask) how old we were. We laughed and said 21 and 23. She had a VERY surprised look on her face and said, oh! We thought you were like 16,17,18.... your age is fine to get married. Heck, I got married when I was 20. Yes, we look young, we told her we got asked that all the time! Ha, so funny!
(...exploring in town! We found shops, a Hard Rock, and the church there! And of course I had to get a picture with our bus driver.)
The resort went all out for the New Years celebration! There was tons of food, really amazing ice sculptures, great entertainment (including all the happy drunk people), and hats and noise makers to celebrate the countdown! It was a great night! (To the left: These are our Canadian friends we met horseback riding!)
HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Yippe for 2011!! :)
Below: Saying good bye to our Jamaican beach - in our Orange and Pink Disneyworld shirts from my parents/Shelby and then in our Jamaican shirts! We had a great time!! :)
Below: Heath found the Jamaican Bob Sled!! :) And I am smiling happily by the Dallas Star (in the airport.)
After our wonderful honeymoon, we had only a day before we headed up to Utah. We packed up our things from the wedding and Christmas and our suitcases and headed to OUR new home. We left late on that next Monday so we got to our home pretty late. We didn't unpack anything we just pulled the truck into the garage and went to bed. This first place we lived was a three story house in Orem. We were renting it from a man who went to Arizona for the winter to avoid the snow. It was a huge house and we loved the ward we were in! In our first home we had lots of fun adventures (including the mouse hunt that was our first post.) Here were some more of them:
*We made banana chocolate shakes... we ended up with a ton of shake that was VERY banana-y! But yummy...
*For our wedding we got a root bear making kit! So... we made it! It was pretty sweet stuff but I liked it and it was best with ice cream for root bear floats! :) It was fun to make it too!!
So... those are just the ones we took pictures of but we had fun at that house. After a month and a half of living there, the man that owned the house decided that he was going to sell the house. He told us we could stay until May like we had talked about but we decided to get out of his hair and find somewhere in Provo, closer to campus (we had spent a lot of time traveling back and forth from Orem to Provo). Luckily we found a cute basement apartment a block away from campus! We had talked about finding somewhere on a Tuesday, looked at the place on Friday, decided on Saturday, and signed the year contract on Monday. It was so fast but we were so excited!! The next Saturday (or maybe a week after that) we moved with help from Kyle, Chad, Denise, Becca, and some of Kyle's/Becca's friends. It was crazy with boxes everywhere! We only had a week and then we went on a trip to NM for President's day! Were able to see all of our family while we were there, I was able to have a doctors appointment for my shoulder/neck, go to the temple with my parents, go to Shelby's game.... It was a great weekend!! Below are some pictures of us playing with Heath's nephews and then of my handsome husband and the beautiful sunset as we drove back up here to Utah. It was a fun trip!
Once we got back we were able to really unpack and get our apartment set up! We were finally able to use all our own things, put up pictures and things... it was so fun! (The first thing up was our pictures/decor in the living room. :) Yes... before unpacking all our clothes! We were excited! :)
We haven't been so great about taking pictures but we have taken some! We've done some fun things the last 3 months living in Provo and have had tons of blessings! Things are so wonderful and we're so happy! :) Here are some pictures of our fun things...
My amazing husband made us a candlelight dinner for Valentine's Day! It was a wonderful dinner complete with heart shaped pb&j, a beautiful couple statue for our house, and very pretty orange and pink flowers. :) I had gone with Kyle to help him get a gift for his girlfriend and I came home to this. I was so excited, it was amazing - he's amazing! That night we watched a movie.... which I cleverly snuck into the house and told him it was a surprise what we were watching - what was it? Flightplan - the movie that we went to (after trying to go to the balloon glow but the traffic being too bad and we didn't get there, so we had watched the fireworks in a field on the end of his truck and then went to subway and a movie) on our first date! :) It was a great first V-day with my hubby!
(Below) Heath got an early birthday present from my parents.... a microwave!! It was so nice to have!! :)
We had few encounters with BYU Basketball. The first one was our attempt to go to the game here against UNM. When we got there they told us that they didn't have any more seats for all sports pass holders so we couldn't go inside. We were very disappointed... but we had some fun with it! The first picture was the sign we were going to hold up! It says: "We love BYU!! (But our grandparents love UNM!)" It was for my Grandma and Grandpa Shupe (she's tried to get me to hold up a sign like that since I came up here!)
But we had extra paper/markers so we made a new sign for UNM (Should've been a Lobo, woof woof woof) and held it up outside the door... during halftime. There were some older gentlemen that DID NOT appreciate our sign. We held it there during halftime (when UNM was winning) and got some great glares! But we had fun with it even though we watched the first half from outside looking into the big screen. :)
That unsuccessful even happened at the game Wednesday. So we went with Chad and Denise at 10am on Saturday for the game that started at 1pm! It was insane! This was the line already at 10... craziness!! But we got in (although we heard that at noon, the all sport pass seats were already full.) We enjoyed the game against Wyoming and the "flashmob" that we got to participate in! We also helped Chad and Denise get signatures from the team with their sweet sign for Denise's brother! (Yes, she successfully got the whole team!! )
Kyle got his mission call!! Chad, Denise, Becca, Heath, and I were all there for his opening of it (and Mom and Dad were on the phone.) The list above is everyone's guess (one stateside and one foreign). And of course... the other FIVE of us there had cameras taking pictures of the occasion. :) What was the result... Elder Harrison is called to serve in the Pensylvania, Pitsburgh mission and he reports to the MTC June 22nd!
Heath surprised a lot of people (especially his buddy Kesler) when he told him that we're going to have a kid! No, we're not pregnant... he meant that we were hatching this little guy in water. He's a great member of our family now! :)
In March we hosted the "roommate dinner." We made hawaiin haystacks and cookies/icing to decorate! After dinner we started the decorating on our St. Patrick's Day plates, of course! It was a lot of fun! And my old roommates, cousin, and husband are a lot more creative then me! :)
April 20-23 was a very busy weekend! First was Chad's graduation! Both sets of my grandparents, my parents, Shelby, and Cindy were in town! It was fun to be with family! We got to spend a lot of time with them - it was great!
Saturday was Heath's birthday... so I sent him on a present hunt! There were clues in the balloons to find where I had put his presents. The few weeks before he'd asked for things for his birthday from movies we were watching so he got them all (a little modified!) Batman suit = kite and water gun, Harry Potter broom = broom with sign that said "Nimbus 2000" on it, Minions = Despicable Me movie, Mirror from Harry Potter = big mirror for our room (he's wanted one for a long while), and scriptures = new scriptures! :) It was fun! I made him pancakes (his favorite) and eggs after his hunt and we enjoyed the morning together before he went to work! And I went and took him lunch/dinner for his lunch break at work and we ate together! I love him - Happy Birthday Hubby! :)
On Sunday we got to have his birthday dinner and cake with Chad, Denise, and Marcus! We had green chili chicken enchiladas and the caramel frosting cake! :) Get ready, get set, blow.... :)
That same day was Easter so we had Heath's birthday celebration/Easter celebration! It was a fun day! In the morning the Easter bunny came to our house! (My basket is the left one, Heath's is in the middle, and our basket from my parents is on the right.) Then Marcus, Denise, Chad, Heath, and I colored eggs after dinner and cake! It was great... as you can see there were some beautiful eggs, some scary eggs, some creative eggs... and lots of dye! We also had a little bit of an egg toss in the church parking lot across the street! And Chad, Denise, Heath, and I played a fun game after that too! Such a great celebration! :)
We started off up here in Utah being unsure about school, work, and also being healthy. Both of us were looking for jobs, my shoulder and neck have been hurting from an injury my junior year of high school during a soccer game and Heath hurt his knee again in a soccer game and then in a basketball game. It was craziness! But we just did all we could and trusted that things would work out. And they have. We have truly been blessed by the Lord. We were able to get Heath's knee fixed through surgery (thankfully his insurance works up here and we were able to pay for what we needed to - and we had a cute picture of him after surgery but it was on his phone that got broken, so we lost it :( ), I've been working with a therapist at NowICan (where we volunteer) to get my neck/shoulder back to having no pain, and we both got jobs (Heath is working at Macy's Department Store selling suits and I am a tutor for Kaplan teaching high school students how to prepare for the ACT/SAT!) It's all going great - and we are having a great time doing all that! We also got callings in church - we are the Den Leaders for the Bear Cub Scouts in our ward! So far it's been so fun - we only have on boy but man, he's gung ho about scouts! It's awesome! :) We love being married and we love all that is going on in our life together!! :)
(Below) For my audition to be a Kaplan tutor I had to teach them "how to" do something... so I taught them how to make cheesecake. The cheesecake stack is what came out of that - and then that night I made a strawberry topping for two of them, banana muffins, and a strawberry milkshake! It was a fun baking day!
A few more of our fun adventures...
Also we volunteered at the NowICan Run to Walk 5k and mile run last weekend! So fun... they had 600 people come run and all their entry fees went right to those cute kiddos to help them get better! It was great to be able to help!! :) And we got bright orange shirts...
And we celebrated Kyle's 19th birthday by singing to him in the morning, going to a Mayan restaurant with Chad, Denise, and Kyle at night (and opened Kyle's presents in the restaurant parking lot), and having cheesecake at their apartment after! Fun time... aw, my wittle brothers not so wittle... :)
Yup that is a long (but quick, really) update of our life the last few months! We're happy, healthy(er), and loving it! Yippee! :)
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